As Greg noted, more info is needed. Generally a bad finish job can be fixed it's just a matter of how much work it will take. It could be as simple as a light sanding and another coat of poly or as drastic as sanding done to raw wood and starting over.

It looks to me like it's been stained but no poly. The floor needs to be resanded! Are you wanting to do it yourself or hire it out? Anytime you hire a new contractor it is imperative to check his references. The better contractors cost a little more and have a busier schedule but will do the job right.... and when mishaps occur - they correct them at no cost to the customer.

Not to make excuses for poor workmanship but the floor does look like it was in very poor condition before he started.
Many of those gouges and scratches were probably there before the job began.
It possibly was a case of biting off more than he could chew.

If you are going to try to fix this yourself or again hire an amateur a large vibrating pad sander is pretty much foolproof.
As uneven as that floor looks though be prepared to use a lot of sanding pads.

We did our maple floors before we moved into our current home and found the makers of these vibrating sanders grossly underestimate the amount of sandpaper it would take.
We used around 10x the amount of sandpaper Flecto recommended but it was partially because of being a harder maple surface and the previous owner used a belt sander which left a very uneven surface.

Our rental was a lrge square pad that pretty much went up to the wall and didn't require any other sander to finish the edges.

12'x 4-5' section took about a hour to get back to the natural wood. Using a 12"x18" pad sander with 36 grit paper. Still on the same sheet of sandpaper. using my air compressor, I stopped periodically to blow away the dust on the floor and the buildup on the sandpaper.

Attached are some pictures. The wider markings are the new damage, the smaller lines we there prior.

Using a buffer [or a drum sander] to sand the floor requires the use of an 'edger' for the places the buffer can't get to. While I've never used one or even seen one in person, I've heard of the square floor sanders that Greg used. If he claims it eliminates the need for an edger - I'd take his word for it

Unless you get rid of ALL the marks in the wood - they will show. The darker the stain the worse they will look.

How much of the damage did the pad sander resolve?
I agree, putty will not be a good fix.
The thing is that if the deep gouges are fully sanded to bare wood they would not be as noticeable, even if you used the same color stain.

You say you are on the same sheet of sandpaper but I highly suspect you are using it too long.
Our floors had been previously done by a hand belt sander and actually didn't look that bad when we decided to refinish them.
Once we got the sander on it the high and low spots became obvious and is one reason we used so much paper.

There was a point where even though the paper felt and looked reasonable it became very slow at removing material.
On our floor it was after about 20 minutes and you could easily tell that progress was slowing and there even was a noticeable sound difference to the machine.

I would suggest that you might want to change your paper much sooner and use the coarsest grit you can get.
All you might be doing after a time by stretching the paper is overworking the machine and spreading dust.

I've been searching for months trying to decide which laminate flooring to use. I'd like to know which brand/kind you have and how they are wearing after time. I like the Kronoswiss (made in Switzlerland) brand as far as the samples I've gotten, but do not know anyone who has this brand. Please give me your insights as to Kronoswiss and/or what laminate you have with the pros/cons.

Good morning all,
I am in search of some advice. I recently discovered hardwood floors on the first floor of my house. 2 of the rooms just had carpet and padding over them but the third.... oh the third room... My living room had adhesive back vinyl tile under the carpet and padding. Getting that stuff out was... well... a adventure. 3 days on my hands and knees with a floor scrapper, a respirator and a heat gun. Well, three days (and a lot of Aleve and icy hot for my back)later I finally got the tile out. Then I had to contend with the adhesive. About half of the adhesive from the tiles remained on the floor. I went to Lowes and found a product called Citristrip. I used a paint roller to roll it on the floors and used the same floor scrapper (a device with a handle about 2 feet long and a long razor blade at the end) to remove a large portion of the adhesive. Again, it was very slow going. After using the hardwood safe stripper I've gone back over it several times using GoofOff.
At this point, i have gotten as much of as I can. You don't stick to it when you walk over it any more but there still seems to be a kind of shiny oily reside on the floor. No matter how much I use the scrapper I can't seem to get it off. I plan to refinish the floor in all three rooms and my concern is that the residual adhesive residue on the floor is going to gum up the pads on the sander. Can anyone offer any advice on how to remove the residue?
Thank you.